Thanks, Trump.
Just out of curiosity, what punishment do you think would be appropriate?
For what exactly?
It may or may not come as a surprise to some but for the Jewish kids I know in the public school system, a swastika doesnât come as a surprise, more like âoh, this again?â.
Otherwise I liked your point about other chooses besides punish/dont punish.
Do you have in your vast library a gif to express shock that freedom of speech includes the freedom to be stupid? How about one for double standards?
Well put!
Forgive me if it was pointed out later in the thread, but racist statements are still within the realm of protected speech in the US. As a Jew Iâm actually glad about this, the fact that someone can make statements defaming me and mine is what protects us to publish and speak our ideas as well. In t-shirt terms, âWe Want Moshiach Nowâ could be considered offensive to Christians as it implicitly denies the foundation of their religion however it is still theoretically protected speech.
As things stand today, a racist statement without explicit calls to violence is simply offensive speech. I am aware of the negative weight of racist statements by a majority group against a minority group and certainly this case could inspire a Ta-Nahisi Coates article in The Atlantic concerning systemic racism but ultimately these kids freedom to offend (and God willing learn from it) is in fact the same freedom that protects me and mine as well as every gangsta rapper who ever uttered a variant of the word on the t-shirts in question here.
Thank God there is no law against hate speech in the US (or Japan where I currently reside). Hate speech laws are a fig leaf put in place to avoid looking at something that might offend yet offer no real protection to those who might be offended.
I like to think that people have lots of chances to learn from their mistakes, maybe even that these girls arent bigoted assholes in the first place, but that possibly they made a very naive mistake.
Expelling a student is a pretty serious thing these days and IMO is a bit too harsh for non violent behavior when you look at the long term consequences.
Perfect example of why hate speech laws donât work as intended. People are clever enough to always come up with new ways to express the same idea.
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I get the distinction youâre making. I donât see that distinction in ethelldaneâs comment.
Claiming heâd still be upset for being reprimanded for something he didnât know was wrong is the acknowledgement that he still doesnât think itâs wrong.
Wait, thereâs a simple rebuttal to this:
Itâs not wrong. If a kid draws a swastika, unaware of its meaning, no harm has been done. And unless you subscribe to the philosophical ideal that consequences are always more important than intent, then it might be inappropriate to punish the child.
But what if he was punished? Can we then say that the punishment is unwarranted or wrong?
No, punishment by a parent (weâre talking about reasonable punishment, not physical abuse) has the objective of molding behaviour, and while we may think that no TV for a month might be too much, that thought could be mitigated by the circumstances, that is: how offensive that is to the parents. Families of Holocaust survivors or children of nazi officers would hopefully be horrified.
This person can look at his actions and cannot see how some degree of punishment might have been warranted. Intent is all that matters. The experience of people who are marginalized is foreign to him. He/she understands he/she needs to preface things with âIâm not racist butâŚâ because he/she doesnât understand his/her privilege.
Thatâs a lot to unpack, racist people donât usually think their words and actions have consequences, they are not always explicitly evil, they actually believe racial slurs are appropriately descriptive words and thatâs why they find it so easy to hide behind Intent. Everybody else has to live with the consequences though.
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It is honestly a simple position. If we agree that hate speech is detrimental to our country, lets codify the process for defining and prosecuting it. If we donât agree, then we donât.
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âŚbut there are.
sure. although I would like for them not to be punished but rehabilitated - not that I know how such a thing might be accomplished - probably a weekâs suspension where theyâre forced to go to some sort of counselling(knowing of course that suspension and counselling would never have gotten me to change a single behavior or idea I had).
Then again I also canât help but think back to my high school as well as every representation of high school in a movie and be struck by the idea that maybe teenagers do a lot of shitty stupid things - especially when in groups. But the misanthrope in me thinks thatâs not because theyâre teenagers but because theyâre human
For example?
Who is injured by the âIâm a Lesbianâ shirt? Or by the âBong Hits 4 Jesusâ shirt? How are they so injured?
How could this argument be extended to someone who might be injured by racist speech?
Should the fact that more than one person took part in colluding to construct the injurious speech be taken into account in this case, as opposed to those other examples?
Can racist, injurious speech (which has the potential to incite physical or mental harm) easily be referred to as merely causing a disturbance? Why are these two outcomes not dissimilar inasmuch as they can be conceptually amalgamated (from your perspective)?
Do you feel like the schools âmissionâ should be taken into account at any time in considering the potential outcomes or impact of racist speech which may serve to incite violence of both a physical and mental nature?
Again, IANAL, is the concept of incitement to cause mental harm even a consideration within the confines of legal precedent?
Which I suppose leads to the question of where moral instruction comes into play and that leads us back to the idea of the schools mission again.
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What is the limitation on circumstances of âimminent dangerâ, âimminent danger of unlawful actionâ, â imminent violenceâ and âimminent hateful violenceâ exactly? Wouldnât that cover a wide variety of circumstances, especially in protected environments such a school (and I guess colleges which seem to inhabit a strange legal nether-realm in the US).
Does the idea of protected classes of people come into play here as well? Are they not protected exactly because they are prone to have violence of the hateful sort done to them?
Doesnât this open up a wide variety of circumstances in which hate speech would be limited?
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Thats not really an example and doesnât have anything to do with my question to @japhroaig
I took those 4 specific examples from the wiki article on Hate speech in the US. From Scaliaâs judgement I believe. IANAL, might have read it wrong.
And I did ask questions, not attempting to make particularly strong statements.
I brought up the college stuff as well, thought you might have some insight on the whole Title VI thing.
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Anyway, isnât this a fascinating conversation?
Need sleep. Back for more tomoz.
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Ah, self-righteous outrage in the age of social media! The growing tendency to this is probably our greatest failure over the past 10-20 years. Truly an activity that does not make anything better, apart from the outraged feeling superior to those bad, bad people they have just criticised on the Internet. So addictive this activity has now become, that we have begun to eagerly await the next public misstep we can all get up in arms about.
Now, maybe these girls are all horrible racists who were finally caught on camera expressing what they have heretofore been acting on. Or maybe they are just stupid teenagers doing something victimless because of a lapse of judgement and because itâs transgressive. The photo does not really provide the context to differentiate one from the other.
In any case, having your morals offended and your feelings hurt does not make you a victim. Itâs why Christians are not victims of Gay Pride parades. The photo would be a problem only if it were a visible symptom or signal of racist activities by the individuals involved or if it directly called for racist activities. Apart from that, there is no way to pre-filter stupid and offensive ideas without restricting the power of judgement and ethics to some elite group. Actions can be judged on the harm they cause to unwilling participants. If, on the other hand, you simply donât like what you hear or see, go hang out somewhere else with other people.
Side note 1:
A quick and dirty rule of thumb for telling apart outrage from disagreement is whether or not you want to see the people punished (or punish them yourself). If yes, then outrage.
Side note 2:
The age between 15-25 is prime time for poor judgement about socially transgressive or offensive expressions. If such a photo was found featuring the justices of the Supreme Court or the board of Wal-Mart, it would be much more worrisome than a photo of high-school seniors.
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Youâre a bit of a dick, arenât you?
I know two things about myself and pretty much everyone I knew at that age:
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We were are almost universally idiots and our sense for what is appropriate was dumbed down considerably after twelve years in a school system that´s designed to produce mindless drones. I know it took me several years to feel like a normal human being again after graduating from high school.
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I personally used to do lots of offensive stuff just to offend people because I hated people. Think Sid Vicious in a Swastika t-shirt. I used to be in my local ANTIFA chapter, yet I went through the streets drunkenly singing Nazi Songs at night just to piss people off.
For these reasons I would withhold judgement and calls for blood because of the inherent stupidity of a couple of high school students.
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That was my thought â like that South Park episode where the Dad is on Wheel of Fortune with a similar half-completed word.
Anyway, those girls are asswipes and will probably end up joining some college sorority whose sole purpose is elitism (and servicing the football frat), but their real mistake was doing this on school grounds. The school can set pretty much whatever rules they want inside the building; much as I denounce these girlsâ abusiveness, I stand with their right to use whatever words they want on their own time.
And jeebs, what happened to the rest of the letters? Couldnât they at least have spelled out âSWEJEIDâ ? </sarcasm>
Itâs hard to know how to respond when Jewish kids from back east in the U.S. stick up for Jewish kidsâ rights in the west U.S. to endure risks worthy of an unfunny Sholem Aleichem story (more like Singer) â to say nothing of risks to girls, gender expansive kids, POC.
What turned out to be the biggest problem at Columbine? Not insufficient free speech.
From my perspective, there are two persuasive points about the incident at Desert Vista High School:
One is that schools appropriately punish all sorts of speech and behavior. All things equal, punishment should specifically and generally deter a future harm. Itâs a judgment call, and our facts are incomplete. I suspect, in this instance, after investigation, at least one expulsion would be warranted by the facts.
Two, violence is a public health issue associated with risk factors (e.g. bullying) and protective factors (e.g. accountability). By intervening early to reduce risk factors and enhance protective factors, schools can prevent future violence. By investigating incidents, schools acquire useful information for keeping kids safe.
Speaking as someone who attended public high school in the west, itâs my firm belief and hope that Desert Vista High School will take this incident seriously, as an opportunity to prevent future harm.
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Not mnay smudges of color there. Hard to assume any of them took it personally.
(also, I have seen better work, ladies, even SEVEN OBFUSCATORY ELVES SEE what you did there in 2016.
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About 2% of the families in Tempe are African-American. Almost 20% are Latino.
okay. Looks like none of them are among the girls in that photo, would you agree?
Oh, youâve added Latino. Jeez.
